The Right Wing Sets Its Sights on MoveOn

In a country ruled more through complacency than persuasion or coercion, MoveOn.org, the 3.3 million member progressive grass-roots group, continues to rattle the D.C. establishment by giving ordinary people the tools to get involved in politics.

MoveOn's ability to bundle small campaign contributions from tens of thousands of rank-and-file progressives and challenge candidates backed by the full weight of the American corporatocracy is causing Washington's traditional power brokers to lose some sleep. Last year -- a nonelection year -- MoveOn's PAC raised over $9 million from 125,000 donors who threw in less than 50 bucks each on average. It's expected to spend $25 million on candidates and independent ad buys in a full-press attack on the Republican Congress this cycle.

Since the 2004 election, the GOP and its allies have taken notice, and have tried, with very limited success, to Swiftboat the group into oblivion.

It began with a contest MoveOn held to find the best homemade campaign ad to use against President Bush. They got 1,500 submissions from their members -- too many to screen quickly -- and two of them compared Bush with Hitler. As soon as MoveOn organizers caught the ads, co-founder Wes Boyd said they "were in poor taste," that the organization "deeply regret[s] that they slipped through our screening process," and they were taken off the site.

But the right's water-carriers were off to the races. The ads were the subject of Drudge report "flashes" and Washington Times features. Fox News spent days on the story; host John Gibson asked what was becoming of America with "MoveOn.org and George Soros sponsoring these ads that compare Bush to Hitler?" Sean Hannity told a guest: "You guys on the left are going so far over the cliff," and Bill O'Reilly cited the ads as proof that the Democratic Party was "being held captive by the far, far left." The same voices were considerably less outraged when the Republican National Committee itself produced and distributed an ad -- called "despicable" by Slate's William Saletan -- that intercut scenes of Hitler's Germany with remarks by leading Democrats including John Kerry, Howard Dean and al Gore a few months later.

In the middle of 2005, with the Washington press corps awaiting the next installment of the "Plame-gate" soap opera, which was peaking at the time, Republicans stepped up the campaign against MoveOn; instead of attacking prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald or the Democratic Party leadership, the Republicans, in the words of a report in Rollcall ($$), "launched a full-scale attack" on the organization, "questioning the liberal group's patriotism and worldview."

At the time, few high-ranking GOP officials were commenting on the rumors of indictments swirling around the White House. But Ken Mehlman, National Republican Party chairman, responded to the mounting criticism of White House political advisor Karl Rove with this non sequitur: "It's disappointing," he said, "that once again, so many Democrat leaders are taking their political cues from the far-left, MoveOn wing of the party."

A month earlier, in a now infamous speech to the New York Conservative Party, Rove himself made waves when he opined that "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks, and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments, and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." The statement got lots of media play and outraged Democrats and progressives, but the very next sentence got less attention: "In the wake of 9/11," Rove added, "liberals believed it was time to submit a petition ... [which] is precisely what Moveon.org did."

Painting an opponent as far out on the fringe and unworthy of trust is, of course, a favorite tactic of hacks everywhere. In a country with an abundance of "low information" voters and a media more focused on Nicole Ritchie's eating habits than any serious analysis of issues of public importance, participating in politics has largely become an emotive act -- all too many Americans vote for the pol with whom they'd like to have a beer, or the one they think better reflects their "values," however vaguely defined, or the one who looks better in that ubiquitous and saccharine family photo that every campaign trots out. The taller candidate has won 21 of the past 26 presidential elections.